Thursday, July 21, 2005

When I was growing up, there wasn't a lot of music in my household. I recall a bit of classical, a smattering of folk music, and then some cheesy stuff like John Denver and Neil Diamond. Musical appreciation at our house basically consisted of toe tapping, and frankly, my skills in that discipline were unimpressive. To no one's surprise, I did not become a musical virtuouso.

My daughter, however, has developed some rather unique musical skills at the tender age of 5 (almost 6!). Sure, she sings and dances a little, but her appeal there is only half technique. The rest is all adorableness.

Where she truly distinguishes herself is in song composition. She is, without a doubt, the finest pre-first-grade lyricist I will ever meet. I do not say this mockingly.

She asked me the other day, "Dad, would you like to hear my new song?"

"I would!" I heartily replied.

"It's called 'Snap On Those Ol' Western Boys'," she explained bafflingly, "It's about a bunch of girls who like a bunch of Western boys!"

Then, she launched into song. It was kind of a bluesy number with some soulful finger snapping and a fair amount of wailing about wanting the aforementioned Western Boys to come back to her.

I do not know where she gets this stuff. There has been no song, to my memory, in this house that sounded the slightest bit like 'Snap On Those Ol' Western Boys'. Ignoring the hopefully unintentional sexual notion of snapping on some sort of boy, the song is now my current favorite. The previous champion was her country-western masterpiece called, "My Heart Is Not A Two Week Old Steak". That was a more melancholy number that centered around a 16 year-old girl whose mother had died and whose father had left. Now it was her 16th birthday and she was unable to use the computer to send out invitations to her party. Thus, only 10 kids attended.

It was a heartbreaking little ditty, sung with surprising authenticity.

I know all kids have wacky imaginations and say the cutest/strangest/most-alarming things, but this has been interesting to me.

She is a lyrical prodigy. I do not say this mockingly. She obviously has an incredibly fertile imagination and a superb sense for what makes a great narrative, not to mention an uncannily precocious command of language, genre, etc. My guess is she'll eventually (in addition to many other achievements to come) become a virtuoso of fiction writing.

Congratulations Mezameyo, you are now my daughter's agent. But your comments are interesting. So far, although she has shown a great interest in writing fiction, her efforts there have been far less interesting than her songs.

Tasty, although the song title is snappy, I fear it doesn't convey what she wishes. I mean, aren't steaks actually supposed to be aged for a couple weeks? It sounds like her heart is one top-notch piece o' meat.